Shooting Up The Streets With Dark Blue

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IGN visits the set of TNT's new undercover cop drama.

By Matt Fowler

I'll admit it. Sometimes set visits aren't the most enthralling of experiences. But there is something to be said for watching machine guns fire at a black SUV. Over and over again. Gun play is always exciting to watch, whether you're 8 or 80. It's just a viscerally jarring joy that we all share, even if we won't all admit to it.

Now take the gun play and the car chases and add them to an outdoor living and breathing on-location shoot and you've got something truly special. There I was in Venice, California, just blocks from the boardwalk, watching the crew of dedicated crafters shoot episode 7 of TNT's hopeful new Jerry Bruckheimer undercover cop series, Dark Blue.

Dark Blue stars Dylan McDermott (The Practice, Party Monster, Hardware) as Carter Shaw, the leader of an "off the grid" team of undercover cops that, for better or worse, might be too invested in their work. The rest of the unit includes Omari Hardwick (Saved) as Ty, Logan Marshall-Green (24, The O.C.) as Dean and Nicki Aycox (Supernatural) as Jaimie. Each of them seek to scrape the dark underbelly of the Los Angeles crime world for their own personal reasons, and will have their physical and emotional endurance tested as the season progresses.

What's going to help Dark Blue separate itself from the rest of the cop show pack? "I really think they go deep into the characters," said Aycox, who plays the newest, greenest member of Carter Shaw's justice league. "I mean, it is a cop show, so we fire weapons and run around, but we start that off as the premise. But as we go into the series more we get into the episodes where each character is looked into. We look at the choices that they make, and where they come from in their past to cause them to be where they're at. Their guilts and their fears and things like that." Aycox's character Jamie is recruited by Carter after he recognizes her valuable knack for lying and making up stories about her past.

IGN's Matt Fowler is a pillar of strength while watching Dark Blue's Logan Marshall-Green demonstrate the correct way to shoot a perp in the back

Omari Hardwick plays, probably, the most "stable" member of the team...the newlywed Ty. "He's sort of the right hand man of Carter," admitted Hardwick. "My character is someone who is out on the street doing a lot of the things that Carter can't do because he's tied to the command post." As Dark Blue plays out, we're going to find out how Ty successfully, or unsuccessfully, balances his family life with his demanding and draining role as an undercover officer. "I believe that the stability that the stability that the audience might see in my character will start to fade," smiled Hardwick. "I think the combination of that stable life and the life of working with Carter are going to collide in a screeching crash and you'll see that I'm not as stable as you thought I was."

Dylan McDermott was not due on set for a while, so we had a chance to speak with him about his new leading man role. We had seen the pilot and heard what Hardwick had said about the character of Carter, but we still wondered...was Carter always going to be back at homebase while his team had all the fun? Or would we get to see McDermott out in undercover roles as well? "Oh yeah. Absolutely. It was really important for me, and I talked to them as well, that I wanted to go out there and go undercover. I wanted to be part of this team. I didn't want to be the guy back in the office saying 'Okay, what happened?' That's not interesting to me."

Click above to watch an exclusive clip from Dark Blue

Years back, audiences world wide got to see McDermott playing a rookie Secret Service Agent in the Clint Eastwood thriller In the Line of Fire. Now McDermott is the seen-it-all grizzled veteran who's in charge. "It's amazing to think about now. Because you don't realize it when it's happening, but then you look back when certain things come back into people's consciousness again, and you look back over your life and your career and you realize that time has past. And you've done these projects that are solidified on screen and you realize 'oh, I'm not that person anymore.' And you've grown and you've aged and you've seasoned. So here I am now on the other side. It's a pretty amazing journey to go from that to this. And to be awake for it. I really enjoyed it, and I'm enjoying this process again"

Dark Blue airs its premiere pilot on Wednesday, July 15th on TNT at 10pm - right after Leverage.